i am an unfortunate pessimist
though i finished The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera nearly two weeks ago, i am still reflecting on it. it was an amazing book. and i really related to one of the characters, Tereza, even though i desperately did not want to, almost as much as she did not want to be herself. i found myself cheering her on at times that were not typical for a reader to cheer on a character, hoping she would succeed in changing who she really was, as if it were me attempting to change who i am. only i already knew that in the end we both are who we are, and if only this realization was comforting, we would be “okay,” but it isn’t comforting, and we will still wish were were other people, with other expectations and ideas, all the while thinking we are better than the people we wish we were.
so the book begins by explaining lightness vs. heaviness with an allusion to Robespierre and that since things happen but once, they are light, “like a shadow, without weight, dead in advance” and then goes on to explain “einmal ist keinmal . . . what happens but once . . . might as well not have happened at all”. this relates to the story of Tereza, her husband Tomas, his lover Sabina and her lover Franz because throughout the novel, the story of their lives, they all have decisions to make, and the question that shadows each decision is whether it is the right one or not, but because each person only has one life, one time to make each decision, they have nothing to compare to, so it really does not matter which choice is made, because in the end, it is as if no choice was ever made.
here are some quotes that made me think while reading:
Lightness & Weight: Ch. 3 “We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come.”
Lightness & Weight: Ch. 16 “we believe that the greatness of man stems from the fact that he bears his fate as Atlas bore the heavens on his shoulders.”
Soul & Body: Ch. 8 “For she had but a single weapon against the world of crudity surrounding her: the books she took out of the municipal library, and above all, the novels. … They not only offered the possibility of an imaginary escape from a life she found unsatisfying; they also had a meaning for her as physical objects: she loved to walk down the street with a book under her arm. It had the same significance for her as an elegant cane for the dandy a century ago. It differentiated her from others.”
Soul & Body: Ch. 14 “The difference between the university graduate and the autodidact lies not so much in the extent of knowledge as in the extent of vitality and self-confidence.”
Soul & Body: Ch. 17 “Anyone whose goal is ’something higher’ must expect some day to suffer vertigo. … No, vertigo is something other than the fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.”
Soul & Body: Ch. 25 “no matter how enthusiastic she was about taking pictures, she could just as easily have turned her enthusiasm to any other endeavor.”
Soul & Body: Ch. 28 “She longed to destroy brutally the past seven years of her life. It was vertigo. A heady, insuperable longing to fall.”
Words Misunderstood: Ch. 3 “Betrayal means breaking ranks and going off into the unknown.”
Words Misunderstood: Ch. 3 “music was the art that comes closest to Dionysian beauty in the sense of intoxication.”
Words Misunderstood: Ch. 5 “Culture is perishing in overproduction, in an avalanche of words, in the madness of quantity.”
Words Misunderstood: Ch. 7 “There are things that can be accomplished only by violence. Physical love is unthinkable without violence.”
Words Misunderstood: Ch. 7 “living in truth, lying neither to ourselves nor to others, was possible only away from the public: the moment someone keeps an eye on what we do, we involuntarily make allowances for that eye, and nothing we do is truthful.”
Soul & Body (Pt. 4): Ch. 6 “it is questions with no answers that set the limits of human possibilities, describe the boundaries of human existence.”
Lightness & Weight (Pt. 5):Ch. 8 “Internal imperatives are all the more powerful and therefore all the more of an inducement to revolt.”
Lightness & Weight (Pt. 5): Ch. 10 “since an ideal is by definition something that can never be found, they are disappointed again and again.”
Lightness & Weight (Pt. 5): Ch. 15 “Is it right to raise one’s voice when others are being silenced? Yes.”
Lightness & Weight (Pt. 5): Ch. 16 “an optimist is someone who thinks that on planet number five the history of mankind will be less bloody. A pessimist is one who thinks otherwise.”
Lightness & Weight (Pt. 5): Ch. 23 “Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.”
The Grand March: Ch. 5 “kitsch is the absolute denial of shit, in both the literal and figurative senses of the word; kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence.”
Karenin’s Smile: Ch. 4 “Perhaps the reason we are unable to love is that we yearn to be loved, that is, we demand something (love) from our partner instead of delivering ourselves up to him demand-free and asking for nothing but his company.”
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